1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic camera for electrically photographing a subject, particularly to an improvement of an apparatus and method in which a white balance of a photographed image is adjusted at a time of photographing a subject using strobe light rays in the electronic camera.
2. Description of the Related Art
There has been known an exposure technique, for example, in Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 8-289314, of detecting a spectral characteristic of a light source for illuminating a subject and automatically adjusting or controlling a white balance to enhance color reproduction of a photographed image in an electronic camera.
As described in Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 2000-102025, a technique of properly adjusting or controlling a white balance for a strobe photographing with a strobe, has also been known.
In the white balance adjustment in the above-described publications, an influence exerted on the photographed image due to a color temperature of light rays from the light source, which is inherent to a light source, can somewhat be suppressed. However, the influence from a dominant light source for the photographing is reflected in the white balance adjustment. Therefore, there is a problem that artificiality remains with respect to some areas in the photographed image little influenced by the dominant light source. For example, the light rays from a fluorescent lamp are mixed with strobe light rays in an indoor photographing. In this case, there is a problem that a deviation is generated in the white balance adjustment in a partial area or areas of a subject irradiated with the strobe light rays and another area or areas of the subject irradiated with the light rays from the fluorescent lamp.
Furthermore, after the photographing, the white balance is adjusted for each area from the image data of the photographed image. In this case, there is also a problem that processing and judgment require much time.